The Lake House
I can't say that New Years really marks the beginning of anything for me. A new school year always brought a clean slate. School shopping was my favorite because I bought new notebooks with crisp, blank pages, and I was able to neatly fill them out with my new, smooth gel pens. In Elementary School the gel pens were pastels, and as I aged I began to favor the blue, black, red, and green packs...but I digress.
This year, however, New Years is truly the start of something new. On January 5th I will be moving to Washington DC. This is the first move I have ever made that does not have a pre-determined end date. Since my return from China I have been living and working at home with my parents. When they hired a permanent replacement for my temporary position at their company I was car-less and confined to the couch as I applied for jobs and internships, only occasionally self-sensoring my exclamations of boredom. But as we all know, time speeds up with you have a deadline. I went from bored to busy with just one decision. As soon as I decided to move to DC I took a train to the capital to apartment hunt. Then my parents took time off of work, which meant I was no longer home alone all day. We went Christmas shopping, hosted my Grandmother from VT, spent an epic Christmas at my sister's in-laws' house, gambled at the casino, dined at restaurants, and cooked and ate a New Years feast.
Of course, one of the other highlights was our trip to the Berkshires of Massachusetts, where we spent three days at the new Lake House my aunt and uncle recently purchased. I couldn't have cooked up a better way to spend the last days of my holiday if I had tried. Everything changed as we crossed the border from Connecticut and passed into Massachusetts. Not only did the state plow stop at the border so the route now had a median of snow, but the trees became frostier and the atmosphere distinctly more Winter Wonderland. The snow was falling as we drove up to the house, and I pulled on my winter boots to walk down the shoveled steps, under the snowy pines, and into the frosted porch. Inside my Uncle already had a fire going, and we all sat down to admire the lake.
Water has a natural, calming effect on people. I'm not sure why. Even when--or maybe especially when--it's mostly frozen and covered in snow we're all content to sit and stare. This time we made sure to do it with mugs of soup, cups of tea, or dripping s'mores. There's something special about doing nothing the old fashioned way. We got pretty amped up over a 1,000 piece jig-saw puzzle, we played a mini-tournament of Texas Holdem' with worthless chips, we read, we talked, and we ate. And it was soooo good.
This year, however, New Years is truly the start of something new. On January 5th I will be moving to Washington DC. This is the first move I have ever made that does not have a pre-determined end date. Since my return from China I have been living and working at home with my parents. When they hired a permanent replacement for my temporary position at their company I was car-less and confined to the couch as I applied for jobs and internships, only occasionally self-sensoring my exclamations of boredom. But as we all know, time speeds up with you have a deadline. I went from bored to busy with just one decision. As soon as I decided to move to DC I took a train to the capital to apartment hunt. Then my parents took time off of work, which meant I was no longer home alone all day. We went Christmas shopping, hosted my Grandmother from VT, spent an epic Christmas at my sister's in-laws' house, gambled at the casino, dined at restaurants, and cooked and ate a New Years feast.
Of course, one of the other highlights was our trip to the Berkshires of Massachusetts, where we spent three days at the new Lake House my aunt and uncle recently purchased. I couldn't have cooked up a better way to spend the last days of my holiday if I had tried. Everything changed as we crossed the border from Connecticut and passed into Massachusetts. Not only did the state plow stop at the border so the route now had a median of snow, but the trees became frostier and the atmosphere distinctly more Winter Wonderland. The snow was falling as we drove up to the house, and I pulled on my winter boots to walk down the shoveled steps, under the snowy pines, and into the frosted porch. Inside my Uncle already had a fire going, and we all sat down to admire the lake.
Water has a natural, calming effect on people. I'm not sure why. Even when--or maybe especially when--it's mostly frozen and covered in snow we're all content to sit and stare. This time we made sure to do it with mugs of soup, cups of tea, or dripping s'mores. There's something special about doing nothing the old fashioned way. We got pretty amped up over a 1,000 piece jig-saw puzzle, we played a mini-tournament of Texas Holdem' with worthless chips, we read, we talked, and we ate. And it was soooo good.
Yes, it was sooo good.
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